Into Action - Sicily

Heroes Remember

Into Action - Sicily

Transcript

On the 10th of June, they took us out of Troon over to Greenwich, Scotland, and onto a ship, and we pulled out of Greenwich, Scotland, 10th of June, didn't know what for. More exercises or something, we figured. Well, I never saw land for thirty days. We had no idea where we where and some guy said we were near Greenland one time, someplace else, but it was an evening of July the 9th that we could see land off to the left. It was Spain, it was all lit up, lights on. Boy, what a sight ‘cause everything been blacked out for years, eh. Spain was all lit up. Spain wasn't in the war, and they told us then we were going in between Gibraltar and Spain. We were invading Sicily in the morning. That'd be early, early morning of July the 10th. They give me a little piece of paper, half as big as one of those pages you got there, not even that big, pencil drawings on it showing the beach where I was gonna be landing, remember it just said "Red Beach". I was landing on Red Beach and it showed a few depths of water and built this little hand drawing on the piece of paper. We stood in the damn hallways there for hours, it seemed like, and that was a terrifying thing for me, was getting off that boat ‘cause I was looking at these buildings out here, a deck we had to scramble over. They threw out their big fishing net over the side of the ship, but it was like a fishing net made out of about half inch rope, squares about six or eight inches square, hung down the side of the boat. We had to go over the top and scramble down that thing and drop into these landing craft, assault craft that went ashore with a ramp on the front. Well, that thing was likely, about like about four or five stories high out of the water. That's a big ship, and I don't like height, either. I can't, I could go in the air plane but I couldn't look over the edge, it would make you sick coming down that thing, and everybo... it was awful. The, climbing up a rope is alright ‘cause everything's tight. But go down a rope, it's a different thing. It's a miserable thing, guys stepping on your hands and the damn butt of the Bren gun would go in the thing (inaudible) Well, like I say, we been on that boat for 30 days. We didn't eat much on there, twice a day. I really didn't care, we had to drop about six feet into that landing craft. It didn't matter. I wouldn't have cared if we'd have missed the thing at that stage of the game. But that was an experience. (inaudible) when I was with the Vandoos. But I guess we... it's hard to tell on water how far we were out, but I think it was a couple of miles that this landing craft, which was just like a big boat, it held about 30 guys, and got into about four feet of water, the front come down and we jump out and get soaked up to here, of course. Had to go ashore. We had a couple of Messerschmidts, whatever they were, strafed us a couple of times, but there wasn't much aircraft though, and there was no shore activity except we get off, get ashore and get dug in. They give us hell at, at night, about eight, nine, ten o'clock. They started giving us hell, but, for the actual getting off the boat onshore, it wasn't, other than the excitement in, in the water and that so it was so many things else. It was a different experience, alright.

Description

Mr. Laird describes the invasion of Sicily, starting with the long voyage from Scotland.

Edwin George Laird

Mr. Laird was born in Verwood, Saskatchewan and attended school there until grade 4. In 1934, when Mr. Laird was 11 years old his father passed away. Mr Laird and the rest of the family moved to a homestead in the bush north of Verwood. Not having a radio until 1940, news of war was very limited. As they started to hear radio coverage, Mr. Laird began to think he should get involved. In February 1942, Mr. Laird travelled to Saskatoon to enlist, and after joining the tank corps was sent to Guelph, Ontario, for training. Soon after he was sent to England where after completing his basic training, he was made a signaller. After advance training he was assigned to the 2nd Field Regiment On June 10, 1943, Mr. Laird disembarked from Scotland, destined to invade Sicily a month later. From there Mr. Laird fought across Italy with the Vandoos and Saskatoon Light Infantry. Eventually, Mr. Laird and other Canadians in Europe were sent to join with Canadian Forces in France. From there they moved into Belgium, and Germany, remaining there until the war ended. Mr. Laird returned to Canada in early 1946, and received his discharge soon after.

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